WHATEVER else has befallen Alan Benzie since he became the first winner of the Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year title at 17 in 2007, he hasn't got the blues.
Most of the music played in the pianist's quietly triumphant homecoming for Bridge Music's Thursday jazz series was his own, and all of his compositions were either of a bouncy disposition or written on sunny days.
This is not to say that Benzie doesn't play with feeling. He most certainly does. The churchy quality he brought to his groovy Midnight Cafe suggested at least some of his time at Berklee School of Music in Boston was spent delving into the rich history of gospel music-inspired jazz, and when he did draw on material other than his own, as witness his lovely rendering of Duke Ellington's Prelude To A Kiss, it was with a particularly soulful longing.
Ellington was an apt source for a cover version in this instance as Benzie, though writing for just piano, bass and drums, has an orchestrator's ear for detail in his compositions, down to the well-thought-through endings.
He also showed a pleasing variety of compositional approaches. It was his spontaneous creativity, however, that impressed even more as improvisations were developed with a clear sense of direction and sustained with inspired phrases as his musical partners, American bassist Dylan Coleman and Hungarian drummer Marton Juhasz, maintained an always-apposite rhythmical momentum.
Unusually these days, Benzie didn't have a CD to sell. On this form and with this repertoire, he certainly sounds ready to record, and he would have had a roomful of willing customers.
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